Forensic Files – Season 06 – Part 1/3 (2001)

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STORYLINE

Forensic Files is an American documentary-style series that reveals how forensic science is used to solve violent crimes, mysterious accidents, and even outbreaks of illness. The show was originally broadcast on TLC, narrated by Peter Thomas, and produced by Medstar Television, in association with truTV Original Productions. It broadcast 400 episodes since its debut on TLC in 1996 as Medical Detectives. Reruns shown on HLN were initially retitled Mystery Detectives before settling with the main title of the show in 2014.

Episode 1: Missing in Time

A young woman was reported missing after a fight with her husband. She was presumed to be dead and her husband was the prime suspect. Police were suspicious of a secondary suspect when he reported a suspicious fire in his car. Two tiny drops of blood were found in the burned interior. Traditional DNA testing was difficult, since there was no body for DNA comparison. But a tiny clue inside the suspect’s watchband and a popular television show helped solve the case.

Episode 2: Missing Pearl

In 1991, Maine resident Pearl Smith is missing after an argument with her husband. Despite pleas from her children, police treat it as a routine missing person’s case. But, when an investigation turns up a blood trail that leads to the couple’s basement, police are certain they’ll finally find the victim’s body.

Episode 3: Man’s Best Friend?

In 1989, 4-year-old April Loveless was found dead in the backyard of her Texas home. Her mother Debbie Loveless and step-father John Miller told police that she was attacked and killed by the family dogs. Investigators did not agree and believed that April’s wounds were not dog bites at all, but slashing injuries, consistent with a knife wound. John and Debbie were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Five years later, the parent’s prayers were answered when a forensic scientist saw something in the crime scene photographs that had been missed the first time around.

Episode 4: Hand Delivered

In this classic episode of Forensic Files, the longest running true crime series in television history, an anonymous “tip” referring to unpublicized aspects of an unsolved case leads police on a hunt for a killer. Investigators use laser technology to identify the location from where the anonymous letter was mailed.

Episode 5: Death Play

In 1993, 16-year-old Marie Robards suffered the devastating loss of her father Steve Robards. The death was ruled the result of cardiac arrest. One year later, she won a part in her high school production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The lines she was required to recite onstage were more than the thoughts and feelings of her character; they struck a chord, and hinted at her own inner turmoil, from the secret she had been hiding: Barium acetate obtained in her high school chemistry class.

Episode 6: Fire Dot Com

In 1996, seventeen month-old Josh Hinson died in a fire in his home. A federal agency ruled that it was arson and Josh’s mother Terri Strickland was charged with murder. An independent fire investigator was able to poke enough holes in the government’s scientific conclusions to ask serious questions about whether the fire was intentionally set.

Episode 7: Mistaken for Dead

Episode 8: Frozen Evidence

In 1992, two masked gunmen enter the Canadian home of Ward and Diana Maracle to rob them, but Ward was shot in the head. If a perpetrator leaves a shoe print in the mud, investigators use established techniques to make a mold of the shoe impression for later identification. In this case, the impression is left in the snow? Here’s the story of one investigator, whose quick thinking and knowledge of science enabled him to capture a shoe impression made in snow, before the evidence melted away. Knowledge of the shoe led investigators to Peter Benedict and Frank Lanoue, who were convicted of aggravated assault and robbery.

Episode 9: Soft Touch

Episode 10: Church Disappearance

When a six-year-old girl disappeared from church during a Sunday service, investigators feared a stalker was preying on children. A psychological profile of the perpetrator leads investigators to a taxi cab driver who was in the vicinity of the church at the time of the disappearance.

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